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Another Voice

By Larry Beahan
The Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp. is airing its plan for the 30-acre section of the Outer Harbor from the Bell Slip to Terminal B. The repurposing of Terminal B for indoor meeting space with ample parking makes good sense. The fencing off of badly contaminated areas and remediation of less contaminated ones for conversion to a grassy meadow for pub…

By Jeff Meyer
Six years ago, Nichols began training its faculty and staff in mandatory reporting of any improper conduct with students. In keeping with that practice, Nichols fully supports state legislation that would require all private schools to do the same.
My connection to Nichols is not as an alumnus, but as a parent who, together with my wife, watched our thr…

By Wendy Mistretta
There is a great distraction at City Honors School, and it needs to be settled quickly.
Some of us have heard the rumblings for a while; however, we did not really know what was happening behind the scenes until our confused and angry students came home on Thursday, Jan. 4. Our students wanted to know why some teachers find it such a chore to spend…

By Eric Feldstein
Supporting the success of local small businesses is essential to growing Western New York’s economy.
When Buffalo attracts major employers, the hundreds or thousands of jobs they’ll create make headlines throughout the region. Those are exciting moments worth celebrating. However, it’s the everyday work of helping entrepreneurs start and grow small …

By Lauren M. Kuwik
At the end of December, the CDC released an emergency advisory for all health care providers concerning the recent spike in influenza cases. This came as no surprise to those of us in primary care offices as we are swamped caring for patients with influenza. As an internist and pediatrician, I have witnessed the devastating consequences of influenza a…

By Sarah Taylor
Helping youth with mental health and behavioral challenges thrive in home and community settings is one of the most challenging issues in our mental system today. In the past, we too often relied on moving the child out of the home into a treatment facility and away from the loving support of the family.
New Directions Youth and Family Services is par…

By Stephanie Crockatt and Sean M. Ryan
Advocacy is a complicated art, requiring that you ignore all the reasons why it won’t be successful and trust in the major reason why it will. Risks for what’s important require great fortitude and energy. As with many nonprofits, advocacy is the primary principle on which the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy was founded. Goal ide…

By Eva M. Doyle
The controversy surrounding the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. bust that is in the park that bears his name on Fillmore and Best Street continues to heat up. The question is: should it be replaced with a statue that actually looks like him?
I was one of the people present during the unveiling of the statue in 1983 I recall that when the bust was revealed…

By Kevin Gaughan
In his classic World War II novel, "Catch-22," Joseph Heller reveals the circular reasoning of bureaucracies. A military regulation allows pilots mentally unfit to fly bombing missions to be excused. When Captain Yossarian seeks the exemption, he's told his desire to avoid war’s madness proves his sanity, and he must continue bombing.
Reading conserv…

By George Morse
I grew up in the 1950’s and early 60’s, when memories of the Great Depression and WWII sustained support for a robust national government. Democrats favored Federal spending for social programs, while Republicans prioritized infrastructure projects and the military. Democrats were willing to spend freely, while Republicans sought balanced budgets. There …

By Melanie Blow
While it’s horrifying to hear about children being sexually abused in a school, such as the Nichols school, experts are only surprised that New York’s lax laws don’t cause it to happen more often.
Child sexual abuse is a trauma so profound the Centers for Disease Control proved it increases the lifetime risk of poor mental, physical, emotional and fin…

By Richard G. Berger
For years Buffalo has been a hospitable destination for newly arrived immigrants from all over the world. They have come to study, to make homes, and, in part, immigration is responsible for the economic resurgence of Buffalo. What may not be well known is that Buffalo was America's first Sanctuary City.
In the years before the Civil War, Buffal…

By Anthony J. Ogorek
“During her senior year at Nichols School, Elizabeth Russ Mohr had a romantic and sexual relationship with her physics teacher, Arthur Budington. She was 17; he was 48.” So read the opening quote from a front-page story in The Buffalo News concerning an inappropriate relationship between a student and one of her teachers.
Having been a public sch…

By Maria Scrivani
Another judicial opening, a new opportunity. If you are a white male, that is. That seems to be the way it works here in Western New York, where women in positions of power at the municipal government level and the top of the judiciary are few and far between.
Recent reports that Rep. Chris Collins is promoting yet another white male to fill a vacan…

By William H. Townsend
In 1959 I was taking my intro engineering geology course at the University of Michigan geology camp in the Tetons when they were selecting a site near Buffalo for a nuclear reprocessing project. Every Sunday my roommate Red Berenson (of hockey fame) and I hiked in the glacier-scoured Tetons.
I could have told you then that geological instabilit…